Civilians try out the MRE (Meals Ready to Eat)

MRE, or Meals Ready to Eat is a common meal given to the soldiers in the field or at war. In the field, it was a lunch meal. During Desert Storm, there was a point where we at three MREs a day, mainly because the mess hall was so far away and the food was horrible.

Even during Desert Storm, the MREs pretty much looked the same. The heater was very new technology then; we started seeing them in January 1990, though they weren’t included with the meals. Desert Storm was a wake up call though. It was apparent the military hadn’t thought that people would be eating more than a few of these, and most didn’t taste that good. Though some of the people in the video complained, trust me–it used to be a lot worse. We called them Meals Rejected by Everyone.

It’s probable you found an older line of them. The military has been updating them every few years to try to improve on them. When I was in, there was only 12, and now there’s 20, and they now include vegetarian meals (I didn’t have very many of those; by the time those came out, I wasn’t in the field much). These are all the menus: http://www.mreinfo.com/mres/mre-menus/all-mre-menus/